


Bare Minimum

by Ludwiggle73



Category: Hetalia: Axis Powers
Genre: Alternate Universe - Human, Artists, Background Relationships, M/M, Nude Beach, Swearing, pretty much always at least a t rating with him, there's a punk hereabouts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-19
Updated: 2019-02-19
Packaged: 2019-10-31 17:22:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,544
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17853893
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ludwiggle73/pseuds/Ludwiggle73
Summary: Roderich goes to a party looking for recognition and finds something more.[Infatuated SpaAus.]





	Bare Minimum

**Author's Note:**

> I like this ship more when it's somebody else (as in, not me) behind the wheel, but I couldn't knock it 'til I tried it :p
> 
> (title is a pun about my work ethic ahaaa)

In thirty-one years, this might be the stupidest decision he’s made.

He should’ve known not to trust such an innocuous invitation from someone like Gilbert. _It’s just a beach party, drinks and sun. You could use it._ As if he’s anyone to talk about being ashen. _Lots of artsy folk coming, you should fraternize. Never know, this could be your big break._ It was the temptation of dropping his name in the society pond and waiting for opportunity to nibble that made him agree. Gilbert’s friends with Francis Bonnefoy, and the intolerable Frenchman has endless connections in Paris. He could probably get Roderich’s latest quintet playing in concert halls across half of Europe with a few phone calls. But Roderich has no intention of buddying-up with Bonnefoy. Everyone else, however, is fair game.

The party is at the sprawling estate of an art curator Roderich has never heard of. It’s West Coast in the very worst way: palm trees hissing secrets and swiping at each other like lethargic tomcats, lawn trimmed so thin it feels like the fuzz of a tennis ball, the mansion made like a bad Cubism sketch. From the front doorway, Roderich counts no less than sixteen abstract paintings that use only primary colors. There’s a cat statue next to the coat rack that he would normally like if not for the massive concrete paws and the gormless grin on its face. Somewhere, speakers are belting shoegaze. The biggest hint that Roderich should turn back now.

But he presses on, follows Gilbert through the house. The back wall is taken up almost wholly by giant French doors, which are held open by small round stones. Roderich sees one is painted into a childish rendition of a ladybug. Something the curator’s niece made in kindergarten? Or a priceless art piece? Both, probably. His old soul chafes beneath the tank top Gilbert made him wear. He drew the line at shorts. If some dark force possesses him to wade, he will roll up his pant legs with dignity.

Outside, Roderich doesn’t see it at first. Then he thinks he’s seeing things. But the third moment of staring confirms the terrible truth.

Some of the people here are naked. In fact, most of them are.

The only thing that keeps him from covering his eyes is the fear of coming off as rude. He’s here as a plus-one, after all; party etiquette is hardly up to him. But in the name of God, they’re playing volleyball without clothes on!

“Gilbert,” he says through a cage of panicked teeth.

“Oh, relax.” The traitor pulls his muscle shirt over his head. “It’s just bodies. We all have one.”

“Do _not_ take your shorts off.” Roderich can’t bear that sight on top of all this.

“Relax,” Gilbert repeats, then grins into the middle distance. “Franny!”

Twenty yards away, a golden figure turns and waves, first in greeting then in summons. Roderich is reluctantly lead onto the sand and forced to watch naked Francis kiss Gilbert on both cheeks. Thankfully, he only smiles at Roderich. “Ah, you came! I am so glad. How is your latest?”

“It’s finished,” Roderich replies warily. “Just needs a little polish.”

Francis seems to find that funny, and it occurs to Roderich belatedly that he wasn’t referring to work. But the Frenchman has already turned his back on them. “Come, come. You must drink. I have all sorts of luscious things in my oasis.”

Which turns out to be both a misnomer and the source of the shoegaze. A tent—too big for camping, too small for a circus—with a bead curtain somehow attached to its gaping mouth. Inside is a pair of speakers, a beer cooler, a kiddie pool, several orchids, and a blond man in all-black with a face full of piercings. With the freckles, it looks more like a botched job of connect the dots than anything.

“Turn this fucking music off,” the creature says, with an accent so thick Roderich can’t be sure if it’s his cigarette causing the smoke or actually a physical manifestation of his words.

“Gil, you know mon amour,” Francis says, wafting at the air. “Roderich, this is Arthur. He’s a musician, too. He makes a lot of statements.”

“Shut up,” Arthur snaps, taking another infinite drag off his cigarette. “Fucking decadent.”

“You should be smoking weed, Art,” Gilbert remarks good-naturedly. “Take the edge off.”

“Ah, but without that he would have nothing left,” Francis says, with only a wistful smile at the string of curses that follows.

Gilbert is laughing and digging through the cooler, but Roderich isn’t. He steps backward. The noise and the scent of orchids is overpowering. For the first time in his life, he says, “I think I’ll mingle.”

No one seems shocked, because no one is listening. Francis is halfway through a blasé sentence: “. . . taking Arthur to Calais.”

“Fuck Calais.”

“Gilbert,” Roderich tries, louder. His friend glances, brow raised. “I’ll be back.” And away he goes, without waiting for disapproval (that he’s almost certain won’t come anyway).

Back out into the blinding sunlight. There are umbrellas and towels scattered across the beach, but most are claimed by couples and three’s a crowd. The volleyball game continues; Roderich recognizes one of the players by his spiked hair. Mikkel Densen, a landscapist. Roderich actually has one of his paintings at home, in his living room. He’s not sure why he’s surprised to see him here, sculpted like a Norse god and flopping in all his Viking glory. _Danes,_ Roderich diagnoses, _are the French of Scandinavia._

A flash of orange in his peripheral vision. They’ve made themselves a fire near the far end of the shore. Several chairs are arranged around it, many untaken. Roderich makes a beeline. At least if his companions are sitting down, they won’t jiggle.

“Ivan,” whines a young man, no more than nineteen to Roderich’s admittedly untrained eye. “Let’s go swimming. I wanna get wet.”

Ivan—the huge Russian this boy is tugging on in vain—shakes his head. “No. Have another hotdog.”

The American impales a weiner on the end of a metal stick and plops down onto Ivan’s lap to hold it over the flames. Ivan is shirtless, but his young lover is completely nude and the same even tan as Francis. Bright blue eyes shift to Roderich without really focusing. Roderich wonders how high he is.

“Wanna roast a hotdog?” the boy asks. “We got hundreds of ’em.”

“No, thank you,” Roderich replies. Why on earth did he think he would get some career opportunity here? Likely anyone who could help him is too buzzed to think straight, anyway. That, or too naked to look in the eye.

Ivan regards him with faint curiosity. “You came with Gilbert?”

It never fails to amaze him how many people that fool knows. “It was my mistake.”

A rumbly chuckle. “You are an artist.”

It’s not pronounced like a question. “A musician, yes. A composer.”

“I can play guitar,” the boy puts in, then swears when his hotdog splits and drops into the flames. He swears again, almost fondly, as he retrieves a new cylinder of meat, and Roderich feels a trickle of melancholy to remember a time when something as simple as a foul word could make him feel powerful.

Ivan observes the American’s ass—Roderich believes it is referred to as a _bubble butt_ —then says, “I have worked with musicians before. What do you play?”

Roderich realizes Ivan is at least ten years older than he first assumed he was. “Violin, piano. I’ve dabbled with flute and clarinet.” He doesn’t mention his multiple awkward attempts to tame a guitar. Strings are unruly beasts that he prefers to meet with a long-range weapon rather than a tiny plastic shield or his own tender fingertips. “I like classical.”

“Classic is in,” the boy remarks with sudden wisdom. “Everybody likes classic. I love ’80s music.”

“Retro is in,” Ivan amends, smiling lightly at Roderich’s pained expression. “But a more fast-pace classical, that would be marketable. Something they can remix and get drunk to.”

Roderich feels a bit ill to think of his music—strands of his soul, torturously tugged out and presented to the world—butchered by dubstep. “Are you an agent?”

Just another light smile.

Now is the time to act. Leave his name, offer something, anything. But doesn’t Ivan already know who he is? And he’s silent—does that mean he doesn’t want to invite any offers? Roderich watches the American’s hotdog browning in the fire. Only when it’s ugly is it ready to be devoured.

So this is what it’s come to. Years of drafts, writing and playing and failing. He’s finally got something that sounds like his past, present, and future . . . and he’s too shy to ask if an agent might like to hear it.

He’ll blame the nudity, if anyone ever interviews him during the premier of _Starving Artist: The Life and Times of R. Edelstein._

Ivan has started massaging the thighs of his boy toy, so Roderich makes a hasty retreat. He’s not going to the oasis with his tail between his legs, so he goes back to the house instead. He doesn’t see or hear anyone inside; a moment of well-earned peace, then. He sources a glass and pours himself some water out of a fountain built into the refrigerator door. There’s a switch for ice, too. He presses it, and after a great roar from the machine an iceberg crashes into his glass and sends half the water splashing onto the floor. Of course.

The kitchen is devoid of towels, so he ventures up a spiral staircase. He finds four bedrooms before, at last, the bathroom. A stock of white cloths and towels under the sink, finally. He grabs his prize and straightens.

A bronze man smiles up at him from the bathtub. “Hi.”

Roderich stares, partly because he’s startled, partly because the man is gorgeous, and partly because he’s famous. It’s not exactly uncommon to see famous people in California, but Roderich can never quite get used to it when it’s this close.

“You’re Toni,” he says, which is apparently the best his brain can come up with on short notice. He wonders if the collective drug fumes have destroyed whatever brain cells weren’t melted by the shoegaze.

“And you’re Rod,” Antonio says, still with that slightly sheepish smile. Not embarrassed to be naked, just a bit sorry to be caught lounging in a bathtub without water.

“Roderich,” he corrects crisply, muscle memory.

“Roderich,” Antonio agrees affably. “Gil told me about you. You play the fiddle?”

He won’t even get into it. “Don’t believe everything that comes out of his mouth. In fact, disregard most of it.”

The gorgeous Spaniard laughs gorgeously. It’s the laugh of someone who knows it looks good while he does it, a laugh that would have a crowd of young women screaming at the top of their lungs. This should reduce the attractiveness a bit, but it doesn’t.

“You’re not drunk, are you?” Roderich asks.

Antonio considers. “No, not really. Why?”

“You’re in a bathtub and you aren’t bathing.”

“Oh.” Antonio chuckles. “Yeah. Guess I am.”

“You’re high,” Roderich deduces flatly, and turns to go.

“No! No, I’m not.” Antonio stands up in the tub, as if to prove sobriety. “I’m just really, really jet-lagged. My last tour just ended.” He lifts a surprisingly toned arm to rub the back of his neck. “I had to leave the party, I was getting all messed up. I’ve been camped out in here for my whole life. It’s really boring.”

Roderich shakes his head. Why is it always extroverts he’s attracted to? “Well, as much as I’d love to stay and chat, I have a floor to save.”

Antonio climbs out of the bath. “That sounds exciting.”

Roderich is tempted to tell him to stay put, but it’s neither his house nor his singer/songwriter, so he just leads the way wordlessly to the spillage in the kitchen. As he mops it up, he listens to Antonio’s feet padding their way around the center island. They pause as he reaches up to jangle a rack of pots and pans, then continue over to the beach-facing windows. “Looks like everybody’s having a good time out there.”

“I wasn’t,” Roderich remarks, then sews his lips shut. Chatty people always bring out the worst in him—that is, chattiness. He knows Antonio and Francis are good friends, so out of a vague sense of self-deprivation he adds, “I’m not into parties.”

Antonio glances over at him. “How come you’re here?”

Roderich pulls himself up, as remaining on his knees will set him directly at groin-height. “I foolishly thought I might find someone interested in my music. Clearly people here have different priorities than me.”

“Oh, I didn’t know you were looking for that.” Antonio observes him warmly. “I thought you were a purist.”

Roderich isn’t sure if that should be a compliment or not. “Unfortunately, these days a man can’t just be a poet or a composer on his lordly father’s inheritance.” His mouth slants. “I can’t, anyway.”

A sage nod. “I could get your foot in the door.”

Roderich stares at him. This easy? It must be a trap. “Oh. You really don’t have to . . .”

“I don’t mind.” Antonio gives a cordial shrug. “But you gotta do me a favor.”

Roderich physically steps back. No, no. A trap, indeed. His quivery heart sinks. Nothing happens so easily in real life, not after this long. “I don’t believe in using sex to get things,” he says, perhaps harsher than needed. “Unlike some people, naming no names. So I’ll decline that offer, thank you.”

Antonio’s eyes—just as green in this kitchen as they are on magazine covers, so they must be genuine—widen in surprise. “Uh, I was gonna ask if you’d maybe collab with me. I wanna incorporate more piano in my next album, but I can’t find any with the right vibe. Not just sad, you know? All kinds of emotion, like in your ’04.”

His ’04. He didn’t know anyone even listened to his work back then, let alone remembered it. Especially a popstar. Overly sentimental and redundant in many places, but there was a beautiful ignorance to the tapes he made back then. It’s been years since he listened to them. Perhaps his latest work could do with more emotion, more light . . . more warmth.

“Well,” Roderich says slowly, “I wouldn’t be opposed to a collaboration.”

Antonio grins. “Cool.” They shake hands, dark and pale, hot and cold. “By the way, I wouldn’t have expected sex without at least taking you to dinner first.”

“Good to know,” Roderich mutters, cheeks darkening. Antonio looks at him expectantly, but Roderich can only stare. He’s getting more comfortable with the nakedness now, which is problematic in itself.

“So?” Antonio tilts his head. “Wanna go to dinner? We can go somewhere fancy. I haven’t blown my advance yet.”

In the rays of that sunny grin, Roderich’s flustered propriety melts away. He doesn’t return the smile, but the music returns to his voice: “I wouldn’t mind that.”

This, thankfully, turns out to be a much better decision.

  
  


_The End._


End file.
